Invertavores and Haff Diseases???? The Rodney Dangerfield of our rivers

So for some reason I catch Buffalo. A lot of buffalo, more than anyone I know. And not just snared in the tail with a crankbait like the way most are caught, but actual lure inside the mouth, it bit the dang thing catches. I think I've finally figured out why. It's because of the way I fish? Well duh... No let me explain. Any one that knows me knows I like to fish a jig. Grubs or hair jigs are I guess are what you might call my specialty. Not exactly mainstream.  And I have another habit that is even more out of the ordinary. I lure fish rivers after dark. Most people chase smallies during the day but night time is the time to settle down with a chunk of bait for catfish. Me I'm constantly wandering around the river at night doing another of my crazy hobbies, trying to catch shovelheads on lures. All of these random things put me in the unique position to regularly catch buffalo on lures.
Buffalo are not well known or understood even though they are one of the most common fish in our rivers, Heck, I think half the people that catch one think they have caught an especially handsome carp. There's just not a lot out there on buffalo. A google search will tell you the difference between the different kinds, their ranges, and a couple lines of general description and maybe a bit on feeding habits. And that's it. Amazing really considering if you look up crappie or walleye or catfish or even carp you will find more than you can read in a week after even the simplest search.
The world record smallmouth buffalo is a whopping 82lbs 4oz while the world record bigmouth buffalo is 70lb 5oz, from Texas and Louisiana respectively. In other words they get huge. Ohio lumps both species together and the record is 46lb. Kentucky's record is 55lbs. Simply put, they are among the biggest fish you are likely to encounter in one of our local rivers.
But no one really ever catches them except for the occasional snared fish. Why? Well buffalo are considered omnivores because in addition to eating plant material they are considered by biologists to also be invertivores. Which means they eat all manner of small crayfish, shrimp, snails, insects and arthropods they find poking around on the river bottom. All the creepy crawly stuff that supports the base of the food chain. And every now and again a hair jig or grub that's fished slowly on the bottom.
Buffalo seem to me to be one of the most strongly nocturnal and crepuscular I know of. I don't know how many times I've been standing knee deep in a riffle casting for smallmouth right at dark and watched as big buffalo ghosted up into the riffle and began to feed right at dark. Making them more vulnerable to someone lure fishing after dark instead of during the day.
I also feel that once full darkness settles in that buffalo become less shy and possibly a bit territorial. Several times, too many to be a coincidence, I've caught them on a rattletrap type lure I was fishing for shovelheads. These fish are invariably hooked either in the mouth or more often on the outside of the mouth. But almost always somewhere around the head instead of snared in the dorsal or tail. Which leads me to believe they are swatting at the bait, maybe not feeding but definitely striking at the bait. But I've also caught them with a rattletrap or grub deep in their throat as well. I have to think though not tops on their list of things to feed on, these big omnivores aren't above eating a minnow every now and then. These are usually among the biggest buffalo I catch, maybe the bigger a buffalo gets  more predatory the larger it becomes.
What I like about buffalo (and shovelheads for that matter) is that they are big fish that come up very shallow at night to feed. Hook one and it makes a terrific run for deeper water. If there is moonlight you can see it pushing a big wave out in front of it as the fish streaks for safety. Some of the most memorable moments of drag screaming, rod bent double, just trying to hold on, fish fighting I've experienced have been when hooking a big buffalo in just inches of water in the middle of the night.
Buffalo are one of, if not the most important commercially caught fish in the United States and are supposed to be delicious but I don't think I'd eat one. Every year there a few mysterious cases of what is known as Haff Disease. Haff disease is is the development of rhabdomyolysis. Rhabdomyolysis is an onset of acute pain and swelling and breakdown of your skeletal muscle sometimes followed by kidney failure. Most cases in the US occur in people who have eaten buffalo in the previous 24 hours. The theory is that toxins found in the plant water hemlock are built up in a few buffalo. Either by eating the plant itself when it's flooded or by ingesting small invertebrates that have eaten water hemlock. There have also been rare cases traced back to eating crawfish so the invertebrate theory seems likely.
The best bait I've found for buffalo has been a nightcrawler. This seems to out produce anything else for me. I've read of people catching them on crickets and shrimp as well, both of which make perfect sense considering the buffalo's penchant for invertebrates. The best lure for me has been far and away a hair jig followed by a grub on a light jighead. In midsummer though when chasing shovelheads I can count on three or four big ones every year smacking a lipless crankbait. I'd love to hear any of your stories you might have or see any of your photos of this underappreciated and little known fish.

Here's a few photos of just a few of the buffalo I've caught including two from just the past week or two...

Lately...

Been all over the last week or so since I've last posted. From chasing stripey fish on the Ohio River (which was lousy) to getting saugfish in the Great and Little Miami watersheds( which has been good). What's worked best for me has been the old standby's, a three inch grub on a jighead  and a suspending Smithwick Rogue. When I started catching fish on the suspending minnow plug just kinda setting there it got me to change up my jighead choice for the grub. I changed from the 1/4 I usually throw to a 1/8 ounce head. This let me fish it a lot slower without hanging up and that has been the ticket the last couple times out. But I've been catching the better ones not below a dam like is standard but on a rocky bank where they are up very shallow at night chasing bait I guess. The 1/8 might be too light below some of the lowheads. The grub has been Vic's three inch curly tail in clear with gold flake. Here's some pics from the last week...

The Select Angler Program

I've been honored to be picked for Pure Fishing's Select Angler Program. Select Anglers, in Pure Fishing's words, "increase our brand awareness and assist with training programs and events when Pure Fishing staff is not available". Which is fine by me as Pure Fishing has some of the worlds best fishing tackle. Brands like Hardy, Fenwick, Hodgeman, Abu Garcia, Berkley, Pflueger and more.
I'd already set a personal goal for myself to regain the grace I once had with a fly rod in 2016. So when Pure Fishing said they would send me a couple outfits of my choosing I knew exactly what I wanted. I chose 8wt and 6wt Fenwick Aetos fly rods paired with the new Pflueger Patriarch fly reels. In several independent tests the Aetos are supposed to be comparable in performance to any fly rod at any price. I can't wait to get my hands on one.
For those of you who have only met me recently this may seem like a pretty big departure from the norm. It actually is a return to form. For decades my fishing was split pretty evenly between conventional tackle and fly tackle. A younger (and skinnier) me would spend weeks every year backpacking the Appalachian Mountains with my wife. I've fly fished  every significant stream in the Great Smoky Mountains as well as a huge bunch of the insignificant ones. Every summer we would be off to West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina or even Colorado in search of a bit of wilderness. Which for various reason we hadn't done much of the last few years. I remember having my license checked by a warden one year and having to root thru six or seven states licenses in my wallet to find the correct one.
Then last year I was teaching some people how to flycast and realized, you know, you just don't have it any more. I know it's a bit like riding a bicycle and you don't forget how. But gone are the days of throwing a curve cast around a boulder to a trout or throwing a 90 foot cast to schooling white bass.
So it's going to be an adventure to reteach myself the beauty of fly casting. I couldn't think of better tools to learn with.
Of course I'll still be doing an inordinate amount of the fishing I've come to be known for the last few years. I'm in love with fishing in all it's various forms. I'm hoping it will make for an interesting year, I guess I'll have to quit slacking off and fish a bit more now...

An epiphany of leaves...

We own a bit of hunting property out in that band of hilly, unglaciated, country in southeastern Ohio. Edge of Appalachia, where half the population raises hell on Saturday night and while half spends Sunday morning in a little church they probably built themselves. On the winding road leading to the property stands one of those little churches. Across the road is a bend pool of a small creek. Complete with a set of wooden benches built so the congregation can watch baptisms. In the creek.

Parking the truck and eating a ham sandwich if I remember right and just looking around I wander down to the creek.. The kind of thing you sometimes do when just killing time waiting to go out and climb a tree that evening. I had on my rubber knee boots that I often wear in early bow season before it gets too cold. I stepped down to get a closer look at the little pool before me. You could see every grain of sand, every stone on the bottom thru the gin clear water.

A striking yellow and red maple leaf floated down into the pool. At first gliding along smoothly and gracefully. Then it began to tumble and then slowly revolve horizontally, slowly turning a circle about the size of a Frisbee just off the bottom of the pool. Then it slid along and a couple feet further along began a slow spiral with each circle slightly tighter than the one before it. Finally just rocking in place as it gently came to rest on the pool's bottom.

I waded out into the six inch deep riffle and launched another leaf into the pool. Less soggy this one sped right over the spots where the other leaf faltered without missing a beat. Hmm...The more buoyant leaf rode higher in the water column in a different layer of current. One unaffected by the drag of contact with the bottom. Intrigued I launched another leaf that floated on top. This one jetted down the main flow but just before it left the pool the leaf got caught off to one side and slowed dramatically before slowly turning and creeping back up the bank three or four feet before turning and slowly curly curling back out to midstream. And so it went. In the gin clear water with hardly any discernable differences in flow every leaf followed a different path.

I hoped no one was watching as this fifty year old man launched leaf after into the tiny stream. Some sailed gently thru the pool while others spun like figure skaters while others tumbled along the bottom. Slowly their floats began to make sense as I reasoned out the invisible flow thru the pool. I thought about my two favorite streams, Forney creek in the GSMNP and the Little Miami. How wildly violent the path a leaf would take as Forney creek falls in one head high waterfall and cascade after another. Or a leaf slowly making a thirty yard circle around a smallmouth wintering hole on the Little Miami.

And how the current must seem to a trout in the creek or a smallmouth in the river. As much as I try I have such a hard time comprehending how thru it's lateral line a fish can feel the current. Sure I can feel the force of the water against me as I wade and can intellectually grasp the idea of a lateral line. But just I can grasp intellectually the idea of a bat navigating thru its world by hearing the sound of the clicks it makes bounce off things I can't even begin to imagine what either must be like. To the smallmouth or to the bat. The bat seemingly hears where there is a space to fly thru, forming a 3-D image in it' mind of where to fly.  Which is how it must be to the bass, science tells me the bass feels the currents that flow the stream. The entire pool filled with mental "leaves" all floating simultaneously by at once.

Laminar flows sliding one atop the other at different velocities, gentle eddies, swirling tornadic vortices, soft pillowy resting lies, defined seams. Even the tiny pool I was standing beside much provide a rich tapestry of information to a fish. While a pool in the river must be like a surreal, speeded up version of a McDonald's playland, full of tiny rooms and slides and passageways all stacked one on top of the other. Okay, see that sounds crazy, there's just no way to put into words a fishes world. In many ways an astronaut walking on the surface of the moon is much easier to understand than the world of the fish in the streams in our own backyards.

I do know that when I keep this concept in mind, that there's more there than meets the eye, I fish better. Or at least feel that I do. I find myself way too often looking at a section of stream in the 2-D manner of those drawings in fishing magazines. Here's a run, here's an eddy, here's the seam. All neatly labelled and drawn out in my head like an illustration. I forget that there's layers to this cake. That a river is a 3-D thing with an up and down that are as changing as the side to side is. Sometimes it's obvious, a hidden boulder creating a slick on the surface telling you it's there. But often it's like the invisible currents in my gin clear baptismal pool, unknown except to floating leaves, lateral lines and the power of your imagination.

Black friday surprise

Imagine my surprise when this guy inhaled one of Vic's grubs instead of a saugeye. He hit on my second cast of the night. By the time I landed him it started to rain. Plus there's no good way to hold one this big and I ended up soaking wet and completely covered in buffalo slime. So I don't know how the saugs were biting tonight I didn't stay long enough to find out. But I'll trade it any time for a battle like that...

Saugthings

Loving this warm weather. Catching them mostly right before or after daylight on a Vic Coomer 3" red with glitter curly tail. The carp actually swallowed the grub. Seems like in fall and winter they are more likely to strike a lure, at least for me.

Christmas wishin'

Dropped by Queen City Outdoors today and was looking over some of the new stuff in stock. Lots of new Shimano reels. Some amazing high end super high quality Hardy product that had me drooling as well. And what I'd like most from Santa, Fenwick Aetos fly rods. I've been a good boy Santa honest I have. Blatant plug here because I love this place and the people. If you get to pick out your own Christmas present be sure and drop by my friend Scotty's store...